Gentle aftertaste of a tongue-twister

Hermanuspietersfontein – if you’re a lover of sauvignon blanc this name will probably have long since unwound its length in your mind, and the wines unfolded their savour on your tongue. Bartho Eksteen (in the pic below), the sauvignon-besotted winemaker and part-owner of HPF (the abbreviation is needed), markets four of them – allowing for a few other grape varieties admixed in small quantities to add complexity to taste and texture. It would be difficult to find anyone doing it better.

The winery recalls the original, full version of the name of the frenetically over-touristed and over-retirement-homed coastal town of Hermanus. In 1855 the village honoured the memory of a Dutch farm schoolteacher, Hermanus Pieters, but a postmaster later decreed the shorter version – responding, perhaps, to the anguish of envelope-addressers in those epistolary days.


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